A new research study found that small amounts of acetylsalicylic acid, commonly known as aspirin, may reduce the body's inflammatory reactions to lack of sleep. The study will be showcased at the SLEEP 2024 yearly conference.
The findings indicate that taking a small amount of aspirin while experiencing reduced sleep led to decreased pro-inflammatory reactions when compared to taking a non-active substance. Aspirin specifically decreased the production of interleukin-6, COX-1/COX-2 double-positive cells in monocytes that were stimulated with lipopolysaccharide, as well as the levels of C-reactive protein in the blood.
"The novelty of this study is that it investigated whether we can pharmacologically reduce the inflammatory consequences of sleep restriction," said lead author Larissa Engert, who has a doctorate in behavioural physiology and is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "We used a non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug because it has been shown to affect specific inflammatory pathways, which were previously shown to be dysregulated by experimental sleep restriction or sleep disturbances."
The researchers gathered information from 46 healthy adults in a study that involved three different protocols: sleep restriction/aspirin, sleep restriction/placebo, and control sleep/placebo. Each protocol included a 14-day phase at home and an 11-day phase in the hospital. In the sleep restriction/aspirin group, participants took low-dose aspirin during both the at-home phase and the in-hospital phase. The in-hospital phase began with two nights of eight hours of sleep, followed by five nights of only four hours of sleep, and then three nights of recovery sleep. The control sleep group had eight hours of sleep each night during the in-hospital stay. Various measures of sleep and the immune system were evaluated at the beginning of the study and at different times throughout.
The data also reveal that the aspirin-induced reduction of inflammatory pathway activity in sleep-restricted participants was paralleled by decreased wake after sleep onset and increased sleep efficiency during recovery sleep, Engert noted.
"These findings show that it is possible to blunt inflammatory pathways activated by sleep restriction through preemptive administration of low-dose aspirin. This may foster the development of new therapeutics that specifically target those pathways, and do not exhibit the undesirable side effects associated with aspirin, such as bleeding and stroke. Such therapeutics could complement behavioural sleep improvement therapies to better prevent or control inflammation and its consequences in those experiencing periods of sleep deficiency," Engert said.
(with ANI inputs)
